


Winter Just Wasn't Our Season

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, SPN Summergen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 21:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12177267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: Written for SPN Summergen for this prompt:“Use it or lose it” had always been his father’s mantra to keep up the training. Turns out it doesn't work the same way with dark powers.





	Winter Just Wasn't Our Season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheYmp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheYmp/gifts).



> Title from Anna Nalick.

“Use it or lose it” had always been his father’s mantra to keep up the training. Turns out it doesn't work the same way with dark powers.

He leaves his brother behind because he'll have his blood on his hands if he stays. Checks in to a motel in Podunk, Alabama, because what's better than a fresh start in a decaying red state that still smells of racist supremacy?

“I'm Alice, by the way,” the girl behind the counter tells him as she pushes a thick, yellowing, honest-to-goodness register across the old polished wood to him.

“Dean,” he says after a beat, the name a relic of a life he hasn't quite left behind yet. “W—Wesson. Dean Wesson.” It's as though he's trying the name on for size, and it's ill-fitting, like the hand-me-downs he's worn most of his life. The irony that he'd trade all his current problems for the quotidian one of poverty isn't lost on him.

 

__

 

 

The mirror above the sink is cracked, the faucet dripping steadily. He looks at his face, the crack across his forehead like he's Harry fucking Potter, and wonders when his eyes will turn black like the things they used to hunt together. When his outside will begin to match his insides.

Alice doesn't see the monster.

"Hey, tall guy," she calls out, all adolescent faux-cheer, when she wants his help fixing something. It's good to feel useful for a change, so he does as asked, pushing the memory of his betrayed brother's face to a dark corner in the back of his mind.

 

__

 

 

It's not quite the dead of winter yet, and the ground is still tillable. He's been here long enough to feel at ease stepping through the kitchen in the early mornings, inhaling the fragrance of brewing tea, looking over the plants he's been tending to in the back garden. (Soon, in mere weeks, maybe days, the ground will be frosted over, the plants gone. He tries not to think about it. They're here now, greenly oblivious to the impending cold.)

Sometimes he heads out for a long walk after tea, a wrapped sandwich in his bag. The air smells of rain and maybe pine, fresh and wet. The rickety back gate leads to a small, winding path, and he thinks of Frodo and Sam leaving the Shire, of Sam saying _this is the farthest I've ever been from home_.

He used to think home was a person, until something demonic seeped into his veins and filled his nights with blackened eyes.

 

__

 

 

One night he dreams of a cold, sloping hillside, a cabin next to a lake. He wakes suddenly, gasping at the force of the memory.

It had been an ordinary time, a regular hunt. Water-spirits or something. Just Dad and him and his ever-present brother. He'd looked into the lake and imagined the water was transparent, revealing a green, watery valley. The power generator had given out for two whole days. He still remembers the flavor of mushrooms cooked on a wood-stove. Amid the tastes and fragrances of the recollection, there's no sound at all, as though the weight of memory has suppressed it. He's spooled in memory, an animated character in a film, moving from frame to frame, 24 per second, and if the technicolor replay in his head sometimes freezes on a particular image, he lets it stay.

If he could talk to his brother, he'd say, _I've been dreaming of things that happened to us as kids. You remember, don't you? The cabin, the lake where I almost drowned? Where was it? I don't remember where it was._

_You'd know, because you're the only person alive who can fill in the gaps in my memory. Because you never forget anything when it concerns me._

_I'm sorry I left you._

 

__

 

 

The greens and browns of the earth are creating the illusion of everlasting warmth. He's begun to love the word 'earthy'. It's a word he can curl his hands around, dig his fingers into and get them a little dirty, letting a little remain under his fingernails like a secret reminder of transgression and its associated thrills.

"Dean," Alice says from somewhere behind him, and he gets the feeling it isn't the first time she's tried to get his attention.

"Yeah," he says, sitting back on his heels, wiping his mud-smeared hands on his jeans.

"There's someone here to see you."

"No one knows I'm—" he begins, and then stops, because of course someone knows. Someone always does, and that someone is currently coming up behind Alice, gently nudging her aside.

"Hey, little brother." He’s larger than life as always, still in Dad’s old jacket with that stupid pendant around his neck, like nothing’s changed at all.

"Dean." Of all the things to be worried about, he's suddenly too-conscious of the dirt under his fingernails.

"Wait," Alice says. "You and your brother are both named Dean?"

Sam lets out a shaky laugh, using the back of his wrist to push his hair out of his eyes. "Just him. I'm—I'm Sam." He glances up, meets her curious eyes. "Long story."

"Right," she says. There's a _ding_ from inside as someone rings the bell on the counter, and she gives the two of them a last glance and a shrug before disappearing into the darkness of the corridor inside.

"Cool chick."

"Alice," Sam says, hanging on to the name like a mirage.

"So." Dean kneels beside him, raising an eyebrow at the fresh clods of earth. "What're we digging for?"

"Potatoes."

"Potatoes, huh?"

"Gotta get them out before the ground frosts over." It's not what Sam wants to say, really. He should apologize for running away. He should say _You're safer without me. It's me the Yellow-Eyed Demon wants, not you. It's me who's the monster._

"What're we waiting for?" Dean rolls his sleeves up to the elbows and sinks his fingers into the cool, wet earth, his shoulder nudging Sam's.

 


End file.
